Barberton Greenstone Belt

Geologists Worldwide Flock Here

The gold rush settlement of the 1880s was made up of ‘Wild West’ Bars, shootouts, prostitutes and the usual mayhem that accompanied the discovery of gold.

But Barberton’s geology is about much more than just gold. Here the world’s oldest rocks remain at about 3.6 billion years old, the Barberton Greenstone Belt dates to a time a mere 400 or so million years after the creation of Earth. Other greenstone rocks crop out of the Greenland but there the exposure is not nearly as extensive or well preserved as those in Barberton.

Geologists from all over the world flock to the area’s incredible geological features. Tidal traces left in the rocks around Barberton are so perfectly preserved that they have been used to prove theories that billions of years ago the moon was much closer to Earth than it is today.